More for your Dollar: The Future of Market Basket

On Monday, a Delaware Court upheld the firing of CEO Arthur T. Demoulas by the Market Basket Board of Directors. While the legal rationale may be justified, I am deeply concerned about what this means for the future of Market Basket, a vital community institution across New England and here in NH-01.

This quote from the ruling caught my eye: “[The Board of Directors] rationally concluded that the CEO was getting ready for a fight,” Judge Travis Laster wrote. “Believing in good faith that another walkout and boycott would be disastrous for the company, they took action.”

For those of us who were living in New England in 2014, we remember the public outcry when the board tried to oust Artie T. the first time. It was one of the largest non-union labor actions in the history of the United States. 25,000 employees, rank-and-file and management, joined hundreds of thousands of Market Basket customers to demand the Board reinstate Artie T. as chairman. And they won.

This movement was not disastrous for the company. In fact, it burnished the company’s image in the eyes of a public grateful for a store where they could truly get “More for their Dollar.” It demonstrated the ways in which Market Basket, under Artie T.’s leadership, worked to balance shareholder profits with fair working conditions for its employees and low prices and high quality for customers.

These types of large, community-oriented businesses are rare in today’s digital-first economy. I am deeply concerned that the ouster of Artie T. portends a shift in Market Basket’s priorities towards a strategy that maximizes corporate profits at the expense of workers and customers.